PMO steps in to clear new airport
Mumbai: The Union ministry of environment and forests, which had given its in-principle approval to the new airport at Navi Mumbai, had in March rejected a proposal to amend the CRZ notification.
Mumbai: The Union ministry of environment and forests, which had given its in-principle approval to the new airport at Navi Mumbai, had in March rejected a proposal to amend the CRZ notification.
MoEF had said that it would result in the destruction of mangroves as well as the reclamation of low-lying land and was ecologically unsound. It asked the City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra to look for an alternative site.
The state government then appealed to the MoEF to reconsider its decision. The airport project has been under consideration for the last 11 years. Three sites were examined by a committee headed by the chairman of the Airports Authority of India. The committee, after considering various parameters, zeroed in on the Navi Mumbai airport site, chief secretary Johny Joseph wrote in a letter to Meena Gupta, secretary of the MoEF in March. Work would be carried out only after studying the environmental impact, said Joseph, adding that the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) had examined the operational requirements of two airports in the Mumbai region and had found this feasible.
CIDCO joint MD Deepak Kapoor said that the amended notification cleared a major hindrance in the Navi Mumbai airport development project. When the permissions were not granted by the minister of environment and forests, the CM had personally taken up the matter with the PMO. Subsequently, the PMO assured CIDCO of support, said a source. CIDCO has appointed Louis Berger, a Washington-based firm, as the consultant and a global bid document as well as a detailed project report are being prepared.
With passenger traffic growing at an average rate of 25% year on year, Mumbai airport will be saturated in four to five years. Last year, over 20 million passengers used Mumbai airport, with the figure expected to touch 37 million by 2010. Mumbai airport is hemmed in from all sides by slums and has limited scope for expansion. It cannot afford a parallel runway due to space constraints, which makes the development of Navi Mumbai airport critical if the current air traffic growth has to be sustained, say aviation observers. TNN